An 802.11n radio includes a transceiver. Radio Frequency (RF) circuitry in the transceiver is configured to suppress phase noise produced by analog circuitry in the radio. Phase noise is suppressed to reduce RF impairments experienced at baseband. However, suppressing the phase noise may consume an unacceptable amount of power in the radio. The unacceptable power consumption may have undesired consequences with respect to battery power consumption in mobile devices.
An 802.11n radio can transmit and receive data at different data rates and using different encoding schemes. Different data rates and different encoding schemes have different RF impairment requirements. For example, lower data rates can withstand higher amounts of RF impairment and still produce useable data while higher data rates can only withstand lower amounts of RF impairment and still produce useable data. By way of illustration, an 802.11n radio operating at a lower data rate can tolerate more phase noise at baseband than an 802.11n radio operating at a higher data rate. However, conventional 802.11n radios typically operate at one power mode that constantly seeks to reduce phase noise to the lowest possible level.